Today’s topic is somewhat among the most important lead generation channels for local businesses and local service providers who have a physical location and rely heavily on local customers. In this short article I will be Answering the following questions in detail:
- What is Google My Business (GMB)?
- How Google My Business (GMB) works and what are its ranking factors?
- How GMB listings can be optimized to outperform competitors?
- What are citations and how to implement them?
What is Google My Business (GMB)?
GMB is simply a business listing on google that shows up on the google search engine result page (SERP). It allows local customers to find your business and provides them with information about your products, services, and your previous customers’ feedback also known as customer reviews.
The following is one of our client’s GMB listing that shows up on google search and maps once someone searches for their brand name or the service they provide.
As you can see the 2 GMB listings are showing up for Toronto Home Comfort and that is because they have 2 showrooms in Toronto and also because the search has been conducted in Toronto, Canada. Once you click on any of the locations it opens up a new window showing the business detail, reviews, posts, images, and hours of operation to the searcher just like how the following picture represents.
Why Every Business should have GMB listings?
It has a variety of benefits for a local business but the most important benefit is to simply gain more visibility and be shown to a potential customer when they need your product or service the most.
Having a Google My Business Account also gives you the ability to post images of your store or office and post new updates, deals, and offers of your business right into your google my business dashboard which then will be shown to the searcher. Yes! Very much like social media!
This is what a GMB post looks like. It also lets the customer call you directly from your GMB posts.
Among other features for business owners are a free GMB website and free map listings.
Before finishing this section I would like to emphasize one of the features that I personally find the most interesting and useful about the GMB dashboard is the insights tab that gives you the data and statistics that then can be used to better understand your potential customers and your business and competitive landscape. These data can then be used for optimization and A-B testing of different offers and activities on your GMB account.
You can find the link to create or claim your Google My Business listing by clicking here.
